


Long Days, Short Years

by verucasalt123



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aging, Ficlet, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, POV Melissa McCall, Pack Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not what she’d pictured, but she wouldn’t trade places with anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Days, Short Years

**Author's Note:**

> Being the single mother of a teenager, Melissa is the character on the show with whom I can identify most easily. I can only hope to be as good a mom as she is.

Melissa McCall looks in the mirror and wonders when this happened. 

She was just in high school, giggling behind the mall, sneaking cigarettes pilfered from her best friend’s mom. Wasn’t she?

It’s been twenty five years. 

She doesn’t feel like there should be anything in her life that was twenty five years ago. How does all that time go by?

The days and nights when Scott was a baby had felt so _long_. The years, it seems, had been short. 

She has no baby now. Her son is closing in on manhood at light speed. 

And that’s another thing. She’d only had the one child – she recalls the not-at-all-subtle hints Rafe would drop about having more, but maybe she knew, even then, that eventually she’d end up on her own with any children she had. 

But she does have more. These days sometimes it feels like she has a houseful. 

A houseful of _children_ who bicker and laugh. Make messes and lots of noise. Forget to flush the toilet. Have to be told to wash their hands. 

A houseful of _almost-adults_ who plan and strategize. Protect each other with a fierce passion. Risk their own safety for the good of total strangers. Love their parents enough to die for them. 

Stiles has been like another son for as long as she can remember. The rest – maybe they haven’t been around as long, but they feel like her responsibility just the same. Even Derek, who technically is an adult, but still pings her mom-radar on the rare occasions he’s around. 

They act like Melissa is _their_ responsibility. 

As for being on her own, though…she’d been right about Raphael, but she feels like she’s been co-parenting with Stiles’ dad for years. It’s nice, especially now that he knows the secrets she’d kept. Another adult with whom she can commiserate or, at the very least, bounce ideas off when there’s really no one else she could talk to about their unique situation. It’s not like she’s inclined to call Alan Deaton or Chris Argent when she’s having a frustrating day. Or week, month, whatever.

Her life is complicated and messy. There are lines around her eyes. A little gray hair sneaking up on her. Her breasts are not in the place where they belong. She tries to picture herself in the outfits she sees Allison and Lydia wearing, because she could absolutely pull off those boots with that jacket. 

She wouldn’t look like a woman in her forties desperately trying not to look like a woman in her forties. 

Except that she really would, probably. 

Melissa is nothing like her own mother at all. 

She wants to hold Scott again; protect him and take away his pain. Stiles, too. She longs for the days when a kiss on a scraped up knee could work a miracle and a bowl of ice cream could make everything better. 

Picturing a different life for herself is a fairly common occurrence. A life where her son hadn’t been bitten by a werewolf; one where her marriage hadn’t been an abject failure; maybe even one in which she’d stuck with her love of drawing and painting instead of going to nursing school. But none of those other imaginary lives fit, because they’d all cost her the life she has now. The one that’s terrifying and reassuring at the same time, the one where she has half a dozen kids, the one that has made her son and his friends have to grow up way too fast.

The life that has made her into the woman staring back at her in that mirror. 

So she didn’t get the fairy tale marriage. She didn’t get to be a housewife and participate in a hundred school and community events like her own mom had. She isn’t one of the parents whose biggest worry is a car crash or a heartbreak. 

Sure, Melissa wouldn’t mind still having perky boobs and wearing short skirts. But the years that had given her gray hair and crow’s feet had also given her joy and hope and that big family she never thought she’d have. 

She knows she’d rather vacuum crumbs out of the couch cushions, because those crumbs belong to people who love her. The reason they’re in the cushions is because she can give these almost-grownups a place where they can just be kids, even if it’s only for a little while.


End file.
